Tag Archive | "YEMEN-USA"

NOVANEWS

At least seven people have lost their lives in a US ground and aerial operation in Yemen’s central province of Ma’rib, the Pentagon says.

Centcom, the US military command in the Middle East, said in a statement that the Tuesday raid had been carried out with the support of the former Yemeni government and had targeted a compound belonging to the al-Qaeda militant group.

“During this operation, US forces killed seven AQAP (Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula) militants through a combination of small arms fire and precision airstrikes,” the statement read.

It said that such assaults “provide insight into AQAP’s disposition, capabilities and intentions,” apparently referring to intelligence that may be obtained as a result of the raids.

On January 29, a similar US attack was conducted in Yakla Village in Bayda Province, the first authorized by President Donald Trump. A $75-million US aircraft was destroyed while dozens of Yemeni civilians and a US Navy SEAL were killed in the ill-prepared commando raid.

The Pentagon claimed that the attack had produced intelligence about al-Qaeda. However, senior US officials rejected the claim, saying that they were not aware of any actionable intelligence.

Yemen has been under regular US drone strikes, with Washington claiming to be targeting al-Qaeda elements while local sources say civilians have been the main victims.

Yemen has also been under military strikes in a prolonged war by Saudi Arabia and a number of its client states since late March 2015. The US has been providing assistance to that war, too.

UN envoy seeks to prevent any attack on crucial port city

On Monday, the United Nations’ Special Envoy for Yemen Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed traveled to Yemen, where he said he wanted to prevent any attack on the western port city of Hudaydah, which is a major lifeline for imports into Yemen.

Saudi Arabia has threatened to attack the port city and retake it from the Houthi Ansarullah movement, a popular movement that has teamed up with the Yemeni army to defend the country against the Saudi-led war.

Cheikh Ahmed also stressed that Yemen’s central bank “must remain independent and must belong to all the Yemeni people.”

He further voiced concern about the dire humanitarian situation, saying, “You all know that the cholera epidemic has increased, reaching more than 25,000 cases and there have been many deaths in less than two weeks.”

The UN envoy’s visit to Yemen was met with protests as some 200 people marched from the UN headquarters in Sana’a to the city’s airport.

The demonstrators pelted Ahmed’s motorcade with rocks, shoes, and eggs as the Mauritanian diplomat was leaving the Sana’a Airport. His bodyguards fired into the air to disperse the crowd.

The Yemeni protesters carried banners, reading “Lift the blockade of Sana’a Airport.” The airport has been closed to commercial flights since August 2016, after the Riyadh regime imposed an air embargo on it.

Posted in USA, YemenComments Off on US attack kills 7 in central Yemen

Amounts airlifted in are woefully inadequate. The mainstream media suppress the ongoing horror, ignoring US responsibility for genocide.

On March 26, the Washington Post-owned Foreign Policy magazine headlined “Pentagon Weighs More Support for Saudi-led War in Yemen,” saying:

“Several Defense officials told Foreign Policy the prospect of more American help for the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen was under discussion even as the administration examines its broader strategy in the region, including looking at ways to counter Iran and to defeat Islamic State militants.”

“The Pentagon views increased support for the Saudi-led coalition as one way of potentially pushing back against Iran’s influence in Yemen, as well as shoring up ties with an ally that felt neglected by the previous administration.”

What’s likely is escalated US-orchestrated aggression in a nation already devastated by two years of imperial war – besides years of US drone war since launched by the Bush/Cheneyadministration in January 2002, civilians overwhelmingly harmed.

According to one unnamed Defense Department official, “(w)e’re interested in building the capability of the Saudis” to operate in Yemen and elsewhere regionally – free to commit atrocities with US help.

In a Saturday address, marking the second anniversary of imperial war on Yemen, Ansarullah movement leader Abdul-Malik Badreddin al-Houthi denounced Saudi terror-bombing war crimes, including use of chemical and other banned weapons – accomplishing nothing but mass slaughter and destruction.

Denouncing aggression on its second anniversary, hundreds of thousands of Yemenis demonstrated in Sana’a’s al-Sabin Square, waving national flags, chanting anti-Saudi slogans.

NOVANEWS

Undeterred by the disastrous commando raid on Yemen in the first days of his Administration, where plenty of civilians were killed but the target got away, President Donald Trump has escalated US military involvement in the tragic Yemen conflict to an unprecedented level. In fact as Foreign Policyreports, the US President has bombed Yemen more in the past week than President Obama (no peacenik) has bombed in a year.

But although the US escalation in Yemen is sold back home as another aggressive front in the war against al-Qaeda, in fact US operations in Yemen are actually helping al-Qaeda as well as its chief sponsor, Saudi Arabia.

The problem is that because his advisors are increasingly drawn from the neocon camp, the advice he is given is filtered through the “noble lie” that the neocons view as the central tenet of their faith. Thus even though themain enemies of al-Qaeda in Yemen are theHouthis, because Trump has been sold theneocon lie that the Houthis are Iranian proxiesTrump is droning Yemen back to the stone age to the advantage of al-Qaeda and Saudi Arabia, who are on the same side.

While it is arguable that the President has authority under the authorization for the use of military force against those attacked us on 9/11 to attack al-Qaeda in Yemen, very few would argue that such authorization extends to actually helping al-Qaeda in Yemen.

Meanwhile, US drone attacks are killing civilians in Yemen and contributing to the genocide of the Yemeni people whose only crime is to have rejected a president who ran unopposed — a US-backed “Arab Spring” candidate — and who immediately approved US drone strikes on his own country.

The Trump State Department is going all in. A sale of anti-Houthi weapons to Saudi Arabia that even the Obama administration rejected washastily approved by the new Administration and soon will be deployed in Saudi Arabia’s war of aggression against its neighbor.

The Trump Administration is doubling down on all of President Obama’s mistakes. Siding with al-Qaeda in Yemen on the false notion that it is fighting a proxy war against Iran.

The neocons are running circles around the new US President. Deal-maker? On foreign affairs, he’s more like a vulnerable rube walking into a used car lot populated by shark car salesmen.